• Korean Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.241-246
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• 1999

Delirium is a syndrome characterized by impairement of consciousness, disorientation, disturbance of sleep-wake cycle, memory impairement, disturbance of perception. It is induced by many causes, which are CNS diseases(head trauma, vascular disease, brain tumor, etc), medical diseases(metabolic disorder, endocrine disturbance, cardiovascular disease) and drugs(anticholinergics, anticonvulsant, antipsychotics, cimetidine etc). Transdermal scopolamine which is usually used to prevent motion sickness has anticholinergic property, and so it can induce delirium. The authors report two cases of delirium induced by transdermal scopolamine. The cases shared common characteristics which were as follows : 1. All of two patients were elderly women. 2. Delirium symptom was abruptly occurred during trip after attaching scopolamine patches. 3. Delirium symptom was rapidly improved within 2-3 days. It is important to educate for both users and managers about directions for transdermal scopolamine patch usage to prevent delirium. And careful history taking is needed to diagnose delirium induced by transdermal scopolamine accurately.

• The Korean Journal of Pain
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.178-182
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• 1996

Background: To evaluate the effect of prophylactic transdermal scopolamine in reducing nausea associated with postoperative epidural morphine. Methods: 30 healthy patients scheduled for cesarean section were given local anesthetics epidurally for surgical anesthesia. After delivery of the baby, transdermal scopolamine patch($Kimite^{(R)}$ Myung Moon Pharm. Co., Seoul, Korea) was applied to the study group(n=15) and placebo patch to the control group(n=15). Postoperative analgesia was provided soley with epidural morphine. Nausea was treated with metoclopramide. Results: During 24 hours postoperatively, the mean nausea score was significantly lower in the study group than in the control group. But the nausea incidence was not significantly different between the two groups. The mean number of times antiemetic drugs which were administered to patients were lower in the study group than in the control group($1.5{\pm}0.5$ vs $3.3{\pm}1.3$, p<0.05). Conclusion: Transdermal scopolamine patch provides antiemetic effect simply, continuously and safely, preventing nausea which could occur during administration of epidural morphine after cesarean section.